How Good Would RANGED Pikemen Be?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ต.ค. 2024
- We look at what would happen if we gave Pikemen (not Halberdiers!) +1 range like the Kamayuk. Reasonable future bonus, or outrageously overpowered? Let's find out today!
#aoe2 #ageofempires2
In other words: what if Pikemen were actual Pikemen instead of Glavemen?
Pretty much!
Halberdiers/glaivemen should have 1/2 or 1/4 effectiveness for both foot units and cavalry since ranged pikemen is for anti cavalry
This is the perfect bonus for the Swiss, maybe as an "Imperial Pikemen", replacing the Halbardiers.
That is actually a brilliant idea - though I suspect you'd have Swiss Pikemen as their unique unit instead if implemented, since they appear in AoE 3 as a merc option.
It might be too strong, maybe don't give them blast furnace for the +2... honestly consider not giving the civ blast furnace either and then the imperial pikemen upgrade doesn't gain additional attack, just say... +5 hp and +1 range
You could do it, but gold cost would need to be added to limit the amount produced late imp
@@rlh12345nah, it wouldn't even be as powerful as Persian trash crossbowmen
Could be the Landsknecht for a Swabian civ.
Nice video. How about a "What if Hussite Wagons had a Pack/Unpack mechanic".
They would act like movable palisade walls only able to attack when stationary. They should also allow troops to garrison inside adding more projectiles. Think of it as a hybrid between a Ram and Tower, and it would make sense lore-wise
Would be a good thematic use.
Another idea would be to make them able to be garrisoned by any 4/5 foot units, and then the wagon takes on their attack characteristics. Eg, garrison a couple of halbs and hand cannons, the wagon shoots hand cannon shots and anything that gets too close is hit with the halb attacks.
That would be really nice...
But that would have to lead to something else: MAKE WALLS PROTECT and interact with projectiles!
1- Units adjacent to walls should be entirely protected from projectiles from the other side.
2- Thrown melee weapons and straight projectiles (Scorpion) cannot hit through walls - that is so absurdly retarded. Might as well switch it from a wall to a MOAT, huh!
3- Ranged weapons with an arc should need at least 1 square of distance to shoot over a wall.
Definitely an interesting topic. Someone else has suggested this before, and it's on the list, but I may move it up if there's high interest.
@@AdmiralWololocall me interested in both a Video about "better Walls" as well as "Hussite Wagons as mobile Towers". I'd even say i'm more into the Idea of better Walls since Rams can already protect Villagers repairing them from Fire because they have a hight. Hussite Wagons already reduce the damage of projectiles passing over them. Cliffs(basically natural walls) already reduce damage taken of units on the one side too.
So how come that Walls don't do that. I mean i could understand Trebuchets (maybe Bombard cannons and -Ships too) not getting any Damage Penalty, because they were build to shoot high and far, But all other ranged units should suffer greatly when shooting over a wall or the Wall absorbing the Shot entirely.
So i'd be interested in a Video how that would change the way the game is played. I mean obviously more defensive, maybe a 5 or 10 fold price increase would make it more of a deliberate choice where to put your Walls, instead of spamming them across half the Map. Maybe that would cause to actually build "Fortified Castles", or otherwise "selfbuild castles" on hilltops. That would also be an interesting take, that a Civ could not have access to castles, but these special Walls and has to build their own castles on the Map with Walls and Towers. However where to put the special Technologies, the other Castle Techs and maybe unique unit? Maybe having no Castle in itself isn't feasable but a nice brain exercise. also i would make Fast Imp a bit harder as you are forced to build two other buildings to unlock Imperial instead of a castle.
its a nice idea but on the other hand to micro intensive for competitive play and the casual player base
Oh man, I remember Age of Chivalry: Hegemony had this for most factions that historically used pike formations, like Flanders, Swiss, Scotland, etc
Yeah, it is very fun to use ranged pikes, especially for civs that can stack more bonuses. Flemish pikes with 4+10 attack, stacked to the max, are the absolute stuff of nightmares. :D
1 range spear/pikemen are also the main protagonists of his (Kor/derfel_cadarn who made the Chivalry mod) king arthur themed campaign its on aokheaven /blacksmith/showfile.php?fileid=356 titled 'the Chronicles of the Warlords', one of many ideas straightup stolen by the DE crew from Chivalry with 0 credit given to him...
Played multi-player on that and got banned from ever using the Swiss again by my friends. Lol
This would be a super cool civ bonus for example for the swiss with a unique halb variant.
been wondering how this would pan out for literal years. Thank you!
would be great to see a regional +1 range to pikemen + upgrades into heavyPikeMan instead of Halb for greater cost.
This is great theory-fodder for future content and expansions.
Imagine the pike and halberd line gets split up and different civs could get bonuses to the other.
That would be ideal
1k subs LETS GO!!!
Swiss civ needed for this. We've taken liberties with what counts as empires before with the sicilians, burgundians, bohemians so might as well go Swiss.
Could split Italy up into Genoa, Venice and Papal states too. With Sicilians representing south Italy
LET'S GOOOOO!
If nothing else a beefy ranged Swiss Pikeman unit for scenarios would be an easy add.
@@AdmiralWololo naw that wouldn't do for me. I want these bad boys in ranked
@@youcanthandlethetruth5433 You're right, no need to hold back for cool units or civs. I'm part Swiss anyways - need representation for my people!
What would a Swiss UU look like? I was thinking it would probably be a halberd-wielding swiss guard, but giving the civ such a huge anti-cavalry focus would just force everyone into archers/siege against them.
Maybe they would gain some extra pierce armour from a unique upgrade or their UU could give them some options? Or a significant speed bonus to the militia line to help counter ranged units? They would need a passable archery range and siege workshop. Stable would probably be awful.
Getting hard countered by siege and hand cannons would be pretty accurate to how they fared in real life. The +1 pike reach could be a castle age tech to give them a definite power spike before their hard counters start to come out.
@@maushetzer1925 well, historically they were good offensive troops, so maybe they can be like the Kamyuk, just a pike-line version
the thing that annoys me and that should be expanded on is the fact that halberdiers were meant to be anti-infantry formations and were specifically made for countering armour.
I like that Dravidian Halbs do just this, but ofc it's weird that it also applies to their swordsmen and especially Urumis with their whip-swords that are apparently lightsabers.
If one were to do a deep rework of unit design, armor-ignoring would be a cool baseline ability for reworked halberdiers.
We have Winged Hussar, Imperial skirmisher. So why not a special infantry unit upgrade with unique skin/ability. Especially if there’s historic significance!
Yeah short of reworking the whole spearline and separating out pikeman, I think this is the next best choice.
we also just got the legionary too, from the militia line
And legionary, savar, imp camel, and houfnice
Indeed there should be a distinction between Pikemen (+1 range and available to ALL civs (anyone can figure out how to make a sharp very long stick)) and Halberdier (a smidge bit more tanky).
That simply adding that +1 range doesn't help them in unmanaged fights against swordsmen, and makes them worse against Javelins, already balances them out by making the act of countering them a non-issue.
Halberdiers got shafted in Age 2, their weapon hits the hardest out of anything melee, yet they have such puny attack in game relative to far weaker weapons like swords and axes!
Hell, halberds _are_ axes, they are the biggest possible axes that remain combat feasible!
@@RheaMainz TBH I kind of like the Dravidian Halb gimmick of ignoring armor. If I were designing the game from scratch, I might give all halbs something like that (on top of a stat/cost rework).
Yeah, ideally they would be separate unit lines, although I don't know if that's realistically something the devs would ever go for, so the next best thing might be to at least have one civ for which they're more realistic.
Polearms rarely get the respect they deserve, unfortunately. Most people don't think they are cool (except maybe the Chinese).
At least kamayuks are pretty good.
That would be interesting, making halberdiers more powerful but lose the +1 range.
You could also male so that the spear line gains 0,5 range per attack upgrade, it would make feudal spears a little bit better while giving an extra buff in imperial. It also makes it easier for balancing by removing blast furnace if the civ proves to be OP
*Champion dying to literal pikemen*
"Please stop bullying me..."
Fun fact: On the Nintendo DS version of the game, which is turn based, the pike line ALWAYS has the priority attack against cavalry units. Normally it's the attacker that has the advantage and whose damage is calculated first. There are other exceptions, of course
That's interesting, I didn't know there was a Nintendo version. But that's a clever way to approximate their anti-cav effectiveness in a turn-based game.
@@AdmiralWololo You didn't even know that version existed? Oo
The game was solid, way below the PC version and somewhat simplistic, but I had a lot of fun with it as a kid and still play it occasionally
If the Swiss civilization comes to the game, you can be sure that they will have the strongest pikemen in the game due to the range of their spears.
A likely bonus for this civilization would be the sharing of Swiss pikemen with any ally since they served as mercenaries in foreign armies.
Many heartiest congratulations for hitting 1K subs admiral! I am proud to be one of them❤ You'll go a long way Admiral, keep up the good work 🎉🎉
Thank you, I greatly appreciate your support!
I have been dreaming about +1 range for the entire spear line as (part of) a unique tech for a civilisation (an infantry and gunpowder one at that) for a long time - problem is, I don't know which would be a good candidate!
This would be a nice civ bonus for italians since they don't get halbs and historically were famous for using pikemen.
In scenario editors theirs heavy pike men, maybe giving them range would be cool but
Yeah, they are in some of the backgrounds of the video with longer pikes.
I was actually thinking about this the other day as a possible civ bonus / UT. Interesting idea.
Comparing every suggestion you have presented so far, this one is by far the one I have personally considered before. I think is a solid change.
I’d love to see it against Cataphract, see if they are going for a degree or they go back to highschool.
Skirm vs pikes micro is interesting. I was expecting them to be outside the minimum range but thought it will be a close one; staying away from melee range is easy though.
It really shouldn’t, but could lead to pikes attacking behind walls built diagonally; scouts may need to be extra careful attacking a defensive player fully walled.
Pretty cool test, I hope you elaborate further on this one.
Thank you, I certainly enjoy brainstorming and some of the wilder ideas I understand may not be the best fit for the base game. But this one is fairly grounded and a lot of people have thought about it.
I will probably at least do a follow-up on partial range, for pikemen and other units.
I'm sure lots of people have already commented on this being an interesting bonus for a potential Swiss civilization... But then I was thinking about it vis-a-vis it just being a generic feature of generic pikeman: It would be interesting to see the pikeman have a feature like this, and the Habs not have it, if it could be balanced in such a way so that it gave the pikeman an advantage in specific situations, but the hab better in most situations. Basically make it so that it would be a strategic choice as to whether or not you wanted to be fielding pikeman or halbadires for the rest of the game.
Maybe it could even be something like pikeman have that bonus, but will not benefit from blacksmith upgrades in the Imperial Age, So if you want those extra bonuses to benefit your unit, you have to upgrade, but you then lose the extra reach... Similar to The light Calvary being slower than the scout; nobody's going to tell you end of the day you shouldn't upgrade the light Calvary, but there is that trade off. Seeing something like that, but a little more exaggerated, would be kind of cool.
I like this bonus, it is exactly what pikemen are supposed to be. But to be even more historically accurate and give more variety of troops to deepen and widen strategy and gameplay (more room for differences amongst civs), pikemen should be a different unit line from the spearmen, like this:
Spearmen - pikemen - elite pikemen (extra range due to long spear, anticavalry)
Volugier/billhook - halberdier (less bonus damage against cavalry, better defense and tankyness)
Then, to keep both spear lines in check with proper anti-infantry infantry, I would also divide the normal infantry like this:
Militia - man at arms - longsword - rodelero/dismounted knight (focus on anti-trash like the normal line, keep shields)
Two Hander - Champion (trample damage or any other attack that can hurt several enemies around the unit, to better deal with massed pikemen just like historical two handed swords in the Renaissance)
YESS! I requested EVERYWHERE to have the mounbtain lords dlc include the Swiss and Tibetans, with the Swiss having a imp UT to give halb +1 range, and UU Doppelsöldner that have insane damage but nearly no armour and bonus against pike type units.
I thought of a similar idea for the Celts, giving 0.5 range to their two handed swordsmen through a new unique tech called Claymores
Would be very cool, could also be a similar tech for Teutons (Landsknechts or Zweihander), although realistically they don't need a buff right now.
probably absolutely overkill but I wonder what this would look like if you gave them 2 range instead of 1. It would really enhance the tight formation and if implemented with as something unique for a new civ like you suggested I reckon it wouldn't even be that insane or overpowered. But maybe I'm completely wrong and it would make them the best unit in the game. The image of a tight formation of pikes holding a narrow mountain pass is just too cool
That would be kind of crazy since that's just 1 range short of a mameluke (and they can't miss), but I definitely see where you're going, it certainly has a strong appeal,
It better come as an imperial upgrade replacing halberdier, so that devs can give it an unique skin. Castle UT usually doesn't change unit graphics.
It's an interesting bonus, if nothing else, but I would be worried about it outshining the kamayuk in its own niche on account of being a trash unit. Definitely some considerations to be made there.
Two possible civilizations to receive this bonus of reach would be Spain with historical records of Spanish thirds with long spears of 4 to 6 meters similar to the Macedonian sarrises. And the one that became most famous at the end of the Middle Ages is of course Switzerland with its pikemen of the same style as the Macedonian sarrises defeating the French/Burgundian cavalry in historical records.
Yes, Swiss are probably the best candidate for this. Spanish tercios could also work, or maybe even "Teuton" Landsknechts that imitated the Swiss armies, although they could instead be armed with swords or arquebuses. But Swiss are the best new-civ fit.
Now I'm just imagining a mixed army of pikes and halberdiers. Or pikes and any infantry with a shield. The aesthetic would be neat, even if I don't expect it to perform much better than normal.
Actually i would like to see European civs (at least 1 or 2) have access to a unit like that, comparable to the Kamayuk, it could be the «Imperial Pike's» unit upgrade. Some nations have access to «Imperial Pike's» instead of the «Halbards» upgrade. And we could even have bouth upgrads aveilable to some other civs, were you could only choose one of the 2 upgrades, rendering the other inaccessible. Or even better after, we have the two upgrades aveilable at the same price, and after we recearch 1 of them the 2nd one will be more expensive (doble price for example), so if you want both you can, but you have to pay the price for having both.
Nah, reduce their bonus damage and increase base damage to balance. Then switch them to the slot of the militia line as the primary infantry since they are the most popular choice regardless of whether cavalry gets deployed. Kamayuk is a perfectly fine example of how the Pikemen line should be improved. Halberdier can be separated and reworked into a premium infantry unit that is only available in Imp, replacing the position of Champion while also balancing the militia line into arrow sponge
The only civ that comes to mind for this would be replacing the pikemen and halberdier with the phalanx for Rome from a more historical context but that is a bit of a stretch as phalanx was more of an early Rome tactic
From a balance stand point it would ideally be a civ that could use some help against infantry.
The phalanx was Greek not Roman
@@soupforthefamily8378 they were used by many cultures.
@@shangri-la-la-la They were not used by late Rome and the phalanx was specifically a hellenistic innovation
@@walleras did you read the post beyond the first sentence?
Also the phalanx was outdated over half a milennia before any aoe2 events.
Pikeman is so op in history, and were the standard units in late middle ages for a reason, and later a whole era named after than as Pike and Shot era
I tested Pikemen with 0.5 range as the team bonus for my Mapuche civilization and am pretty satisfied with the results. They perform noticeably better in situations where they already shine, and fare better but are still very weak by their usual counters. It's strong enough to have a visible impact but moderate enough to be a team bonus instead of a civ bonus.
I did mod it some time ago, also reduced the damage and hidden bonus by 50% to compensate, found it funny they could attack through walls. did not think about the kite against champions, would need to revisit it
Put their frame delay up to 3.5 same as their attack speed.
a kind of regional unit for central european civs like a landsknecht as halberdier replacement with this range ability could be nice
This video is wanting me to head into the scenario editor and play with these guys, I love this idea, and now I want the Swiss in so we can have an official version of these guys,
I really love this idea, though the fact that the kamayuk was given this ability kinda spoils the bonus :( It is used in the Realms expansion as the Swiss bonus I think, and also in Age of Chivalry
Yeah, I don't want to reuse things too much, but I might make an exception here (like the devs did with Leitis UU and the Wootz Steel tech). 1/2 a range is another option as well.
Awesome video, thanks mate.
I actually think this could be balanced as a civ bonus if you didn't give them halbardiers.
Besides, if you look at how spearmen, pikemen and halbs wield their weapons the spears and pikes appear to hold it more upright than the halbardiers.
Yeah, I absolutely think it could be balanced that way. As I've said there's always the option to remove one other tech if needed, but mainly this would be a unique pikeman that's a bit better or worse than halberdiers depending on the situation.
i think even to halberdiers would be ok because the civ bonus could also make sppear line slower like a reverse celt
I'd keep the same attack as Halbs but reduce their speed such that trying to micro them becomes pointless.
I think it'd be great as a unique upgrade on the condition that they get some more pierce armour to make up for the lost hp and armour they lose from not getting halb upgrade.
Can't really give them more hp without also making them absolutely broken in melee considering they already do fairly well against other nations strong halbs.
Hello. Do you like turn based strategy games? I like Medieval 2 and Age of Wonders 3.
Hey, haven't tried many, to be frank. Definitely enjoyed some turn-based games like Civilization and Lords of Magic though.
I just have one comment about the examples shown. You have chose both Halbadier and Pikeman for example purposes, but to me, it is somewhat confusing since Halbadier has better stats than Pikeman. For example, the clip shown that Halbadier wins against Skirms without range, then you show pike with range and lost, that doesnt conclude if Halbs win or lose if it has extra range.
Really pulling out the thesaurus for the benefit of your p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-pikemen
*Bane Voice*: So, you think alliteration is your ally? I was born with it! Moulded by it! I didn't see a Thesaurus until I was a man.
@@AdmiralWololo Alliteration and rhyme, powerful agents to the uninitiated
If any civ should ever get this, it must be the Swiss!
And they also get an Imperial-Upgrade for the Pikemen-Line
that will be their teambonus as well.
Like the Imperia skirmisher for the Vietnamese.
I have been thinking about that civ a lot, actually.
Only problem is that Switzerland that not really exist
until rather modern times which would make it pretty much
historically incorrect to begin with.
But then again there is also the Vikings - or even Romans, Goths,
Huns and Mongols - reaching Imperial Age which all happened
after the fall of their empire/civilisation.
So it would probably not even be the least accurate civilisation.
Yeah, historical inspiration is important, but there are definitely enough anachronisms (Aztec Trebuchets!) that I'm not too worried about it. Would love to have more civs outside of Europe too, but I have to admit a Swiss civ would be cool
@@AdmiralWololo I agree!
Well, the funny thing is that even the Japanese did not have trebuchets, although they had some similar to mangonels.
This game would need hundreds of new skins and new (somewhat) different units if everything was to be historically correct.
Many civs vould have a "saboteur" instead of a petard to destroy buildings and walls, for instance.
Yeah, incas having the range made no sense. They should have an unique unit that is some type of an anti-archer infantry like goths, but with a twist.
A few civs I think should receive this unit are the Burgundians Celts Teutons Britons Chinese and Koreans
And as a follow-up I think halberdiers should ignore part of enemy armor
Actually i think it would be ok, they kinda overlap with kamayuks, but that is fine, actually giving more range to melee units looks interesting, even if just in theory, imagine rams with attack range,
How about this...
You can train pikemen at the castle but there's also an upgrade that let's you upgrade/ replace halbadiers. That way you can train them at barracks and castle for roughly the same price and get the plus 1 range. Unlike tech would make them part of the militia line too so gambason and or supplies apply.
The cost would end up being slightly less than most civs pikemen for some extra hp, plus one armor, and plus one range. Maybe faster training. He'll maybe even some movement. All around small stuff.
+15hp
+1AR/+1pa
+1range
+.04 MS
-supplies.
-2 sec training.
These are pikemen so they're still weak. Yah gotta pick some direction. Especially since you don't get bonus damage against horses all this small stuff might make a bigger difference.
I will say that they might be great in enemy bases as arson would let them get in twice the amount of damge with there range. The downside being how squishy they are.
How about two options on the unit, like with Rathas, where one is ranged with lower speed?
I think this could be part of a regional rework of the Halberdiers. Halbs don't make any sense as a followup to Pikes. They aren't the same weaponry class. Here some better suited weapons:
Glaive
Yari
Partisan
Bill
It definitely would be ideal to split Pikes/Halbs into separate unit lines.
It should apply to all spear line units and be balanced simply by reducing the base damage of pikes by 1 and halbs by 2, and by giving less bonus damage against horsies. The spear is the king of all weapons after all.
the unused Heavy Pikeman could get this
bro just magically created the swiss civ
Swiss civ bonus
They have already had +1 range in a mod. It was taken away when the civ went live.
All spear units should have one rage. Eagles would be so fun to ambush and swarm units.
Haha would be fun for sure, absolutely OP on eagles as well though, but I would definitely consider partial range for them or other spear units.
Calling 'historically normal ranged pikemen' derivative of the kamayucky is such a disgrace!
It's probable there were way more pikemen used than kamayuks using anything as long as pikes!
From a game design perspective, some consider it derivative to reuse the ability of an existing Unique Unit.
But of course if the game were more history-centered, old-world Sarissas or Pikes have a much longer and stronger claim to having 1 or even 2 range.
One easy and historically accurate fix would be a frame-delay/attack delay after movement, shown by lowering the pikes together. Subsequent Movement/attack-move with pikes down should then be slower and last for a sec or so after combat is finished. Organizing a block of pikemen takes a lot of drill and unit cohesion, so this would make sense from a historical perspective. In AoE terms, it would make melee micro-ing/kite-ing very difficult to do against anything besides elephants. See Total War's pikemen as an example.
@@ryanharris3848 That is a great idea! Pikes are notoriously unwieldy, being more massive than the largest two handed swords, so slow, but long reaching feels very right!
A civ with pikemen that can actually throw the spears like the did in real history would be great and more historically accurate.
I don't think a 1 range would be realistic.
However a 0.25, 0.33 or 0.5 bonus range would be a sweet spot.
I think am melee units should get a rework with a little range. I'm sure even 0.1 range would help a lot with pathing
I think this would be a way to help swordsmen especially. Perhaps even slightly longer range with each upgrade (and most of their upgrades literally refer to their swords getting longer).
Champs an Halbs should be given 0.5 + range. It would give infantry a significant purpose
I think the biggest scenario that you missed is this:
They can attack through walls! Like steppe lancers.
Buuuut I do love short range pikemen
This tech for ranged pikes should appear as additional tech in barracks. To give more variety, few civs could have this tech researched and I mean civs known of using pikes in battles.
Units like spearman and pikeman should be separated. Spearman line would be trash, fast and light infantry.
Pikeman would be slow and heavy armored infantry with 1+ range attack and be upgradeable to heavy pikeman and later to halbs.
I think this is a great idea even for generic pics. It should be used to increase the value of infantry. Cavs would be weaker to pikemen, infantry strong against pikes, and cavs strong against archers.
Just not getting halb should be enough to offset the effect of the extra range. People really sleep on the impact +2 base attack has on a unit with 4 base attack. With Blast furnace and against something like a halb with no base melee armor but all the upgrades, the difference is 10-3 vs 8-3, or 7 vs 5. That's 40% more damage! And that's also the best case scenario, against a champion with one base melee armor it is 6 vs 4 damage, 50% more. That is without factoring in the extra hp or attack bonus. It's why viking pikes were so bad before the buffs, the extra couple hp really doesn't compensate for the dps disadvantage.
I have 1 range spearmen/pikemen in my Kingdom of Heaven scenario and I've had to balance them out by significantly reducing their attack speed. They are simply too good in choke points.
It's always annoyed me that "Pikemen" are not carrying pikes.
This improves all infantry civs but inca unique units lost unique ablity
Every civ should have ranged pike. It's silly they don't.
In terms of historical accuracy, I totally agree.
A bit complicated in terms of game design though, unless they separate/rename the current "pikeman" into a distinct unit and/or rebalance the spearline to compensate for the buff.
Interesting but how about we solve the path finding first
Agreed...but also totally out of my control. Would gladly forward this to the devs if I were in a position to make a difference.
One way to solve this would be taking away HPs and nerfing bonus damages
That would probably be the best way to rework the existing spearline without breaking pikes out into a different unit
@@AdmiralWololo On that note maybe HP having minor changes however definitely will need major bonus damage changes to see the results on effect. It should be something like one small mass weaker than normal pikeman output but on bigger mass stronger than normal pikeman output. That way it'll truly feel more unique without taking away the identiy. It will avoid being a Kamayuk. Since Kamayuks are very strong against Champs while these Pikeman wont be even at big mass. Only anti-Cav as they supposed to be.
Kamayuk: am I a joke to you?
I think generic pikemen should be slower but have +1 range. And generic militia-line should have trample damage (druzinha could add more and be cheaper)
Yeah, ranged but slower pikemen would be a reasonable tradeoff. They should probably be split out of the spearline as well so that the halberdier upgrade isn't an awkward downgrade into less range (or visually/logically weird if it did have 1 range).
@@AdmiralWololo yes, what I can't figure out is which niche should the halb fill, and if it should cost gold instead of wood. What do you think? Maybe a counter infantry for those civs without HC
You can 100% have ranged pikemen be bapanced, its just they have to be one of if not the slowest infantry unit. No micro cheese
What if pikemen only dealt their full damage at range, and dealt less at close range…
New unique unit swiss pike man?
Spanish pikemen ???? Would be cool
Tercios for the win
Just add a generic technology to make pikemen slowdown cav on hit to help against raiding in bases.
This is what flemish revoultion should be.
I always disliked the fact that ensemble studios games always had spear users gain no reach advantage over axe or sword or any other melee weapon I took it upon myself to get this done at first I gave the spear line 1 range it looked ridiculous their weapons are simply too short man , so I reduced it to 0.5 Honestly I think of it more as a visual thing it looks nice does it effect gameplay? Not too much with 0.5 range they look good and just does a bit better against everything I think if we gonna implement this it would be universal be kinda silly if only one civ had longer reaching spears/pikes if its not a unique unit.
Yeah, partial range would work, just would need some stat adjustments to make sense in terms of balance. Ideally pikemen would have been designed more accurately from the start, but at this point there's a lot of inertia to overcome if we want to change that.
@@AdmiralWololo now here is the thing I play AOC not DE so a lot differ from AOC and DE personally I think its fine aa testing showed me it doesn't make a big difference but who knows gamers always find ways to turn something into overpowered BS using micro lol.
I haven't check all the videos about infantry yet but the whole infantry class needs an overhaul. In fact, if the infantry is affected, then ranged and cavalry also needs an overhaul as well. I noticed that archers have a near millisecond gap in reloading and firing. Cavalry can easily disengaged from crowded fight. Those 2 classes are getting away from consequences. If that's the case, the devs should also give infantry some outlandish perks and bonuses. Like the ability to spawn in squads, to reduce enemy's mobility and even halt them if conditions are met.
As for the pokey boys, I feel like the devs didn't seem to fix or differentiate between the spearmen, pikemen and halberdiers. And the way they attack, swing/stab as well as holding their weapons while doing so are the different. When I see their attack animation, I can only think of the hoplites/phalangites/centurions from AOE1. The other hand just seems like it should be holding a shield. Often I picture spearmen similar to hoplites, pikemen similar to Macedonian Pikemen and halberdiers, in some cases just like the 2 handed swords but were more specialized to fight infantry.
It's better if the devs decide to overhaul the whole combat systems rather than just spreadsheeting. Adding numbers, giving free techs, more stats and even locking technologies for certain factions just to nerf them is no longer sensible. They have the capability to overhaul the combat system and should further improve such mechanics to backup their gameplay. Otherwise, just give every civs unit reskins. I feel much better that way.
isnt this basically kamayuk?
Kamayuk range attack must 2
just take their pikes
*looks at Kamayuk*
Weeeeell...
you mean like they do in Age of Empires III
+1 Range but only against militia
We have ranged pikemen, just play Incas.
That would ruin the mayan ❤
Ranged pikemen are just kamayuks